Shipyards

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Shipyards

#16 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:With the current global queue, it's rather easy to see what's going on. PP is given to the first item in the queue, up to it's 1-turn limit, and so on down the queue until all the PP is used up. All projects receiving PP are at the top of the queue.
That's not entirely true. For research, if you enqueue a bunch of techs for which you don't have all the prerequisites, those techs won't get RP allocated until their prereqs are finished, and won't ever get RP if their prereqs are removed from the queue before being finished. For production, we could allow enqueuing of currently unproducible buildings projects, and some projects might require a strategic resource or similar to get funding on a given turn, the availability of which could fluctuate as supply lines are block and opened. And even without strategic resources, if a build location's source of imported PP is cut off, some of its projects might be cut off, regardless of their position in the queue above other supplyable projects.
Due to these additional constraints, projects won't necessarily be build in the order listed in the queue. And it's not obvious what must be done to get PP to a particular item. And thus much of the elegance and simplicity of a global queue is lost.
I think we'll need tooltips and/or other indicators of why things on queues aren't getting funded, regardless of how shipyards limits work. Likely the boxes on the queue for the items will have some indication... Perhaps a few different icons for "insufficient shipyard capacity", "prerequisite not available", "missing strategic resource", "insufficient PP at this location", etc. (obviously all with tooltips).

The global queues are an ordering of priorities by the player, but this doesn't necessarily mean that those priorities can and will be met in that order. The reduced micromangement of each planet having its own queue is still eliminated, so the global queue is still useful.
tzlaine wrote:...produce as many ships as your total number of shipyard PPs allows, and you don't specify which one they belong to while they are being built.
IMO, it should really be possible to destroy the second Death Star before it becomes fully operational... along with any other under-construction fleets. Like with buildings, a large long-time-to-build ship's production location is an important strategic choice, particularly since ships under construction could appear in battles as targets before they're finished.

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Bigjoe5
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Re: Shipyards

#17 Post by Bigjoe5 »

eleazar wrote:
Bigjoe5 wrote:I actually didn't think to look into the production system. I thought it would be similar the that of the first 3 Orion games, since this game is "in the tradition of the Master of Orion series". I would have to play the current version to confirm my initial response to that idea (that it sucks)....

But back to the topic, I feel now more strongly than ever that shipyards would not enrich gameplay if they are implemented in that fashion and that it will be difficult with this production system to find a better implementation.
Perhaps you should do us the courtesy of actually looking into the production system— and the reasoning that lead up to it, before passing judgement. Do a few searches. The global production queue (a decision made before i joined) is IMHO one of our best departures from standard MoO. It's convenience for a particular scheme of shipyards is a minor aspect of it's value.
Bigjoe5 also wrote:I'm going to have to trust that the people who decided upon this system knew what they were doing and made the right decision.
The way you doctor my words makes them seem so much.......less polite than I intended them to be.

But anyway, I suppose I'd better check it out before contributing to any more topics related to it.
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eleazar
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Re: Shipyards

#18 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:With the current global queue, it's rather easy to see what's going on. PP is given to the first item in the queue, up to it's 1-turn limit, and so on down the queue until all the PP is used up. All projects receiving PP are at the top of the queue.
That's not entirely true....
I hadn't though of that... point taken.
In the example of techs un-researchable due to prerequisites the exception is pretty straightforward, and can be understood by looking at the tech (un-researchable ones are colored differently) or examining the tech tree. It's not too hard to figure out what's going on, and the overall annoyance is less that it would be if you couldn't enqueue un-researchables.

But IMHO it's clear that adding exceptions like these to queue behavior decrease the ease of use. And if enough complications/elaborations are added, a single queue could be harder and more confusing to use than multiple queues.

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:Due to these additional constraints, projects won't necessarily be build in the order listed in the queue. And it's not obvious what must be done to get PP to a particular item. And thus much of the elegance and simplicity of a global queue is lost.
I think we'll need tooltips and/or other indicators of why things on queues aren't getting funded, regardless of how shipyards limits work. Likely the boxes on the queue for the items will have some indication... Perhaps a few different icons for "insufficient shipyard capacity", "prerequisite not available", "missing strategic resource", "insufficient PP at this location", etc. (obviously all with tooltips).
I agree we will need at least a few icons. "Blockade!" is the obvious example, and once the icon is learned the tooltip wouldn't need to be referenced to understand what's going on. This exception is relatively straightforward, and the solution is again apparent: lift the siege. "Prerequisite not available" is equally understandable.

But i'm rather wary of exceptions like "insufficient shipyard capacity" & "insufficient PP at this location", because even after the player has learned the meaning of these icons, the exact situation and recourse aren't obvious. The player still needs to know which shipyard/location is full, and which other items are at that shipyard/location, so he can move it ahead of them. He will need to check the tooltip (or some other interface) to find out what's really happening. Really what we have here are multiple queues mashed together. And the dynamics of the sub-queues matter. Even if in such a situation a single queue is more desirable than multiple queues it's usability has been decreased.



I'm not trying to say that that situation is the end of the world, but that it has undesirable, unKISS elements which can be avoided through something like in my previous post.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Shipyards

#19 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:Blockade! [...] is relatively straightforward, and the solution is again apparent: lift the siege. "Prerequisite not available" is equally understandable.

But i'm rather wary of exceptions like "insufficient shipyard capacity" & "insufficient PP at this location", because even after the player has learned the meaning of these icons, the exact situation and recourse aren't obvious.
Why is blockade understandable, but insufficient shipyard capacity not? I'd think the latter is easier to understand how to remedy, as the fix, upgrading the shipyard, is local to the build location, while a blockade could presumably involve a supply line being cut at a system away from the build location.
The player still needs to know which shipyard/location is full, and which other items are at that shipyard/location, so he can move it ahead of them. He will need to check the tooltip (or some other interface) to find out what's really happening.
There are a couple interface ways to convey this sort of info:
- Items on the queue should have their build location written in text on them
- Systems which have a shipyard should have it shown on the sidepanel, with a set of icons to represent under-consturction ships, similar to buildings under construction on planet panels
- The shipyard on the sidepanel can also show it's capacity or other such info, and how much of that capacity is being used.
...unKISS elements which can be avoided through something like in my previous post.
To be clear, the only difference between what you proposed and what I'm proposing now is the addition of PP spending limits to shipyards.

As important as not complicating the queue too much is, I think it's just as important that unlimited spending at a shipyard not be imbalancing. It's difficult or impossible to know now whether it would be, so we could leave it as a "to be determined" balance issue, or feature to be added only if needed.

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eleazar
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Re: Shipyards

#20 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:...unKISS elements which can be avoided through something like in my previous post.
To be clear, the only difference between what you proposed and what I'm proposing now is the addition of PP spending limits to shipyards.

As important as not complicating the queue too much is, I think it's just as important that unlimited spending at a shipyard not be imbalancing. It's difficult or impossible to know now whether it would be, so we could leave it as a "to be determined" balance issue, or feature to be added only if needed.
"To be determined" is fine with me. After playing without we will be in a much better position to decide if they are necessary. Besides, arguing usability of a particular interface is notoriously hard. ;)

I don't think i'd change any other aspect of shipyards if PP limits were certain... with one possible exception:

It seems generally desirable to have at least a few upgrades of the shipyard. But what should the difference be between a high and low level shipyard? That's where the controversy is. In the absence of a compelling argument for something else, i'd prefer that the difference is in one major factor. Contrary to my first post in this thread, i now think higher tech-level ships should be opened up by higher-level shipyards. (somehow a rogue element of "realism" surfaced in my mind and liked the realistic-ness of bigger shipyards producing bigger ships.) But if shipyards were limited in the amount of PP they could produce, it may be best to remove the tech-level limitation from shipyards, as redundant. But that shouldn't be too hard to do.

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Re: Shipyards

#21 Post by emrys »

I should take this opportunity to reiterate my support for (a particular variation of) the model that was being bandied about ages ago in brainstorming, i.e. the model Geoff's been presenting:

* Shipyards have to be explicitly built at a particular planet as a building.
* Ships have to be assigned to a particular shipyard when queued up on the build queue.
* Each Shipyard has a "assembly capacity" which is the max PP/turn that can be funnelled through it.
* Shipyards can be upgraded (in fairly discrete chunks) to allow more PP/turn through them (by build queue projects).
* For balance, it should be cheaper and/or quicker to gain an additional given PP/turn output ability by upgrading an existing shipyard than to build a new one of that capacity. (Since building a new one gives you redundancy and flexibility, so it should be more expensive to give you a trade-off to make).

Upsides:

* Shipyards are important as they define the locations and rate of ship building.
* Shipyards (and the ships built at them) have a defined physical location, which is both natural, helps gives shape to empires, leads to real strategic decisions (shipyard vulnerability vs time to front - most cost efficiency vs. all eggs in one basket risk), and helps give the AI a clue what to do (shipyards make good targets...).
* Shipyards naturally prevent you suddenly pumping out huge amounts of ships at a new colony dumped next to an enemy.
* In addition the physical location of shipyards and ships under construction gives us the opportunity to show such things as separately targetable entities on the battle screen, creating another tactical objective in battle (hit-and-run raid to damage either the shipyard or the work-in-progress ships) giving nice eye candy (just imagine the 3D models half built hulls of ships with little worker craft buzzing around them).

Downsides:

* Build queue screen gets a bit more complex - need to pick a location when you queue a ship, need to explain why ships aren't building if the shipyard is maxed out. Fortunately both of these issues are fairly intuitive, real-life issues, so I expect most people will grasp them quickly, so the usability shouldn't be a problem.
* umm... there must be another...

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Re: Shipyards

#22 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Geoff the Medio wrote: IMO, it should really be possible to destroy the second Death Star before it becomes fully operational... along with any other under-construction fleets. Like with buildings, a large long-time-to-build ship's production location is an important strategic choice, particularly since ships under construction could appear in battles as targets before they're finished.
While we're talking about the second Death Star..... if you can destroy the second Death Star before it's operational, how about being able to make your enemy think it's not operational and then destroy all their ships with your Stellar Converter?

If a ship is in a shipyard while it's being built, then that allows people to come in and destroy it. Good strategies. When a ship is built, it would obviously be deployed and allow other ships to be built at that shipyard. But under certain rare circumstances, you might not want your ship to be deployed immediately. Suppose you can control whether or not the ship is deployed immediately. The default would obviously be to deploy it immediately, but if the player hits a little toggle, he can leave a fully operational ship in the shipyard for as long as he wants. Just an idea... I'm kind of resigned to the idea of shipyards now.

By the way, I couldn't find anything in the design archive regarding the global PP system, or even in the requirements document. Could someone give me link to something related please?
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eleazar
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Re: Shipyards

#23 Post by eleazar »

this explains what, but not why:
http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/V.3_Requirements

reasoning behind the global production queue:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=634

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MikkoM
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Re: Shipyards

#24 Post by MikkoM »

tzlaine wrote: No that you've seen the specifics, here's the big picture -- what shipyards give us if we do them right. In most 4X games, dealing a blow to a strategic target is hard to do. You can capture a "rich"/"artifact" world, or one with a wonder on it, and that's about it. Usually this doesn't do much, given the (usually large) total number of colonies. Every colony pretty much builds the same stuff as every other colony. With shipyards, you immediately have a new strategic depth that is lacking in these other 4X games. Now you can do things like destroy a shipyard in an area of your enemy's empire near yours, to lengthen her reinforcement lines, and decrease her overall build capacity. You also add another dimension to your planning. Do I go for attrition, grabbing a bunch of planets far from the enemy's shipyards, where she is weak (since she will surely defend shipyard systems the most), or do I go for the jugular? Do I upgrade my shipyards so I can build more ships tomorrow, or do I build more ships today? Do I build over there, or over here? This also allows the AI to really hit you where it hurts. AIs are notoriously bad at figuring out the most important targets to attack in a 4X game. All in all, I think shipyards add something most 4X games lack -- high-value strategic targets for the players to maneuver around.
This seems like a nice way to make shipyards important and at the same time add one more interesting strategic element to the game.

And as for limiting the amount of shipyards per empire, maybe they could just be under heavy maintenance costs, since if ships and shipyards are both under maintenance costs you probably will want to build more ships than shipyards. Like eleazar said:
eleazar wrote:I recognize the value of having shipyards relatively rare, but i don't think it should be necessary to artificially limit the number of shipyards. Simply make them expensive to build and maintain, and sane economics will place a sensible but flexible limit on the number.
One reason why I am not a big fan of an artificial 1 shipyard for X amount of star systems is that I am rather sceptical about the ability of this kind of a system to take into account all kinds of game situations, like empires shrinking after wars etc.

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eleazar
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Re: Shipyards

#25 Post by eleazar »

MikkoM wrote:One reason why I am not a big fan of an artificial 1 shipyard for X amount of star systems is that I am rather sceptical about the ability of this kind of a system to take into account all kinds of game situations, like empires shrinking after wars etc.
Good point, also capturing systems with shipyards would (at least temporarily) change the ratio of planets to shipyards.

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Re: Shipyards

#26 Post by marhawkman »

to me a logical extension of spaceyards would be a form of uber space yard that encompasses the entire solar system. But yeah. as is the game needs a limitation on how much can be funneled into building stuff at a planet.
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Re: Shipyards

#27 Post by Bigjoe5 »

marhawkman wrote:to me a logical extension of spaceyards would be a form of uber space yard that encompasses the entire solar system. But yeah. as is the game needs a limitation on how much can be funneled into building stuff at a planet.
How would that work in space combat? It could certainly provide some interesting terrain....
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Re: Shipyards

#28 Post by marhawkman »

Um.... :shock: I hadn't gotten to that part. Most likely a massive array of semi mobile space stations. Relatively lightly armed/armored, near immobile in battle, it'd be really amusing if there was some way for the structure to actually build small ships such as fighters or frigates in battle. As a system wide structure, it'd presumably be so large that it'd take an entire armada to destroy it quickly.

This is starting to remind me of those games like Gradius and Galaga......

Naturally this would be one of those "top teir techs" that you'd have to spend most of the game reasearching.
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Re: Shipyards

#29 Post by yaromir »

to me a logical extension of spaceyards would be a form of uber space yard that encompasses the entire solar system.
That's up there with Dyson spheres. Though, I imagine shipyards aren't THAT much larger than the ships they build. Solar-system sized shipyards would churn out ships of what size? Earth? Jupiter? Sun?

It could be an interesting idea for a 'special' to find a system with functioning Dyson sphere and mysterious machinery inside. Could be a giant energy to matter converter, energy gathering-transmission, long-range re-supply station, or even...yes, a giant shipyard for an ancient civilization.
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Re: Shipyards

#30 Post by marhawkman »

yaromir wrote:
to me a logical extension of spaceyards would be a form of uber space yard that encompasses the entire solar system.
That's up there with Dyson spheres. Though, I imagine shipyards aren't THAT much larger than the ships they build. Solar-system sized shipyards would churn out ships of what size? Earth? Jupiter? Sun?

It could be an interesting idea for a 'special' to find a system with functioning Dyson sphere and mysterious machinery inside. Could be a giant energy to matter converter, energy gathering-transmission, long-range re-supply station, or even...yes, a giant shipyard for an ancient civilization.
Remember the Death Star? It was said to be the size of a moon. :) One of these could conceivably mass produce those. Or build larger things.
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